With Wisconsin recall elections looming against four Republican state senators—as well as Governor Scott Walker and Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch—the state’s politics was thrown for another loop Friday when a targeted senator up and quit.

1. Republicans have lost the complete control of state government that allowed the governor to advance an austerity agenda that was defined by attacks on unions and deep cuts in public education and public services funding—along with the harshest voter ID law in the nation, a rigidly partisan redistricting of legislative districts and what critics complain has been a battering of the state’s open-government tradition.

2. State Senate majority leader Scott Fitzgerald, (brother of Assembly Speaker Jeff) a Walker ally who is targeted for recall, has lost his position as the dominant player in the legislature. He now must enter into a power-sharing agreement with minority leader Mark Miller, a progressive Democrats who led a historic walkout by his caucus during last year’s struggle over Walker’s labor law changes. Committee assignments will be redone to reflect what is now a 16-16 split in the Senate.

3. Governor Walker, who has threatened to call special sessions of the legislature to deal with pet projects, will now only be able to do so if he can work with the Democrats—something he has not done up to this point.

4. If, as expected, the federal courts reject the state’s redistricting plan, it could be sent back to a legislature where Democrats can now play a critical role in drawing the maps. That could result in a significant upturn in their fortunes going into this fall’s elections.

5. Republicans have lost their premier candidate in one of four state Senate recall elections that are now scheduled for May 8 primaries and a June 5 election. Galloway had raised major money and organized a campaign of consequence before announcing that family health concerns had led her to exit the legislature. Now, Democrat Donna Seidel, a popular former county official in the Wausau-area district and the assistant minority leader in the state Assembly, emerges as a clear front-runner for a seat that—if she wins—would tip the Senate to full Democratic control.

All of these changes were made possible by the recall power, which allows citizens to petition for new elections. This old progressive tool of accountability was used last summer to force a number of Republican senators who supported the Walker agenda to defend their seats.

Going into last summer’s recall votes, Republicans held a 19-14 advantage in the Senate. Two Republicans were defeated, leaving the GOP with a narrow 17-16 advantage—and giving moderate Republican Senator Dale Schultz the power to temper his party’s excesses. Now, with Galloway’s exit, the chamber goes to the 16-16 split.

After the next round of recalls, it is possible that Democrats could end up with full control of the Senate, potentially by a margin of up to 19-14—or, if Fitzgerald is defeated by upstart challenger Lori Compas, 20-13.

Additionally, a new Democratic Senate could sit with a new Democratic governor, as Walker’s recall is now all but certain to take place on the same day as the senators.

What has happened is remarkable. What could happen is historic. And the people, using the recall power afforded them by progressive reformers of a century ago, are making it happen.

I wanted to post this example of liberals claiming victory in Wisconsin before it got purged with all the rest of their bogus smack talk.

It’s time to eat your cockroach poison and start flailing around wildly on your backs, Democrats. You just got sprayed with the nasty crap that you were so damned determined to spray on Walker and every Republican you could smear. And this is what, the third time you’ve had your asses handed to you after previously trying to recall state senators and a judge???

Even in a blue state like Wisconsin, you just got utterly rejected.

As of my sending this out to the world, Walker is up by a massive 20 points with 40% of the precincts reporting. And the race was called within what? About forty minutes of the returns coming in??? In a race all the liberals were saying would go to the wire? This is a state that Obama won by ffifteen points just a few years ago!!!

I guess voters like the guy who created tens of thousands of jobs while taking a $3.6 billion deficit that his Democrat predecessor left for him and turning it into a $150 million surplus without raising taxes. And I guess they don’t like Democrat politicians who act like cockroaches when the lights get turned on and flee the state rather than vote.

How did Obama lead? Well, it’s my understanding he sent a tweet. I guess I’m glad Obama isn’t supporting me, because this is a guy who only knows how to support himself at other people’s expense. If you’re a Democrat, you truly ought to be ashamed of the turd you elected.

I’ve got to just laugh my very best mocking laughter as the same Democrats who wildly cheered when Obama was raising and spending more campaign money than anyone in human history are now crying and whining that Republicans are outspending them. It must truly suck to get hung on your own petard.

Every model that Obama’s campaign had for his path to victory counted on Wisconsin. And that state is VERY OBVIOUSLY now in play for Mitt Romney. Which is to say that if Obama has to even defend one of the most reliably Democrat states in the nation, well, he’s just starting to look more and more and more like Jimmy Carter.

Update, June 7: Democrats have been whining about the spending gap between Democrats and Walker, claiming something like a $7-$1 dollar difference because of all the conservative money pouring in from across the nation. The media has widely reported this Democrat talking point.

It turns out that it’s a lie, like pretty much everything else the left says: the fact is that the same media that reported every dollar coming in from conservatives somehow omitted $21 million coming in from the unions. Which is to say that liberals are furious that their out-of-state money wasn’t as much as the Republicans’ out-of-state money and therefore out-of-state money is anti-democratic even though they tried to raise as much of it as they could themselves.

The last thing God damn America will stomach is a governor or a politician who does the right thing. That must be stopped. God damn America has a death wish, and how dare anybody interfere with Democrats’ right to slit America’s collective (make that collectivist) throat.

Wisconsin Govenor Scott Walker’s policy has already proven he was right and the über fascist left that viciously attacked him was über wrong. Take a look at some of these articles I’ve done to refresh yourself on Wisconsin (fr0m oldest to most recent):

One morning last February, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker called his staff into his office. “Guys,” he warned, “it’s going to be a tough week.” Walker had recently sent a letter to state employees proposing steps—ranging from restricting collective bargaining to requiring workers to start contributing to their own pension accounts—to eliminate the state’s $3.6 billion deficit. That day in February was when Walker would announce his plan publicly.

It turned out to be a tough year. The state immediately erupted into a national spectacle, with tens of thousands of citizens, led by Wisconsin’s public-employee unions, seizing control of the capitol for weeks to protest the reforms. By early March, the crowds grew as big as 100,000, police estimated. Protesters set up encampments in the statehouse, openly drinking and engaging in drug use beneath the marble dome. Democratic state senators fled Wisconsin to prevent a vote on Walker’s plan. Eventually, the Senate did manage to pass the reforms, which survived a legal challenge and became law in July.

The unions aren’t done yet: they’re now trying to recall Walker from office. To do so, they will try to convince Wisconsin voters that Walker’s reforms have rendered the state ungovernable. But the evidence, so far, contradicts that claim—and Wisconsinites seem to realize it.

Back in 1959, Wisconsin became the first state to let public employees unionize. The unions spent the next half-century productively, generating lavish benefits for their members. By the time Walker took office in 2011, the overwhelming majority of state and local government workers paid nothing toward the annual contributions to their pension accounts, which equaled roughly 10 percent of their salaries per year. The average employee also used just 6.2 percent of his salary on his health-insurance premium. Among Walker’s reforms, therefore, was requiring employees to start paying 5.8 percent of their salaries, on average, toward their pensions and to double their health-insurance payments to 12.4 percent of their salaries. These two changes, Walker estimated, would save local governments $724 million annually, letting him cut state aid to localities and reduce Wisconsin’s $3.6 billion biennial deficit.

These measures angered unions, but Walker’s other moves were even more controversial. One was to allow government employees to bargain collectively only when negotiating wages; in other areas, collective bargaining would no longer be part of the contract-making process. The unions screamed bloody murder, decrying the loss of what they called their “right” to collective bargaining. “We are prepared to implement the financial concessions proposed to help bring our state’s budget into balance, but we will not be denied our God-given right to join a real union,” said Marty Beil, head of the Wisconsin State Employees Union, back in February. “We will not—I repeat we will not—be denied our rights to collectively bargain.”

What had the unions most up in arms, however, was a reform that ended mandatory dues for members. Wisconsin unions were collecting up to $1,100 per member per year in these obligatory payments, which they then spent on getting sympathetic politicians elected. In the last two elections, for instance, the state’s largest teachers’ union spent $3.6 million supporting candidates. Walker’s reform meant that government workers could now opt out of paying these dues—savings that could help offset those workers’ newly increased health and pension payments, the governor said. The unions knew that, given the option, many of their members would indeed choose not to write a check—and that this would strangle union election spending.

The unions’ battle against Walker’s reforms has rested on the argument that the changes would damage public services beyond repair. The truth, however, is that the reforms not only are saving money already; they’re doing so with little disruption to services. In early August, noticing the trend, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported that Milwaukee would save more in health-care and pension costs than it would lose in state aid, leaving the city $11 million ahead in 2012—despite Mayor Tom Barrett’s prediction in March that Walker’s budget “makes our structural deficit explode.”

The collective-bargaining component of Walker’s plan has yielded especially large financial dividends for school districts. Before the reform, many districts’ annual union contracts required them to buy health insurance from WEA Trust, a nonprofit affiliated with the state’s largest teachers’ union. Once the reform limited collective bargaining to wage negotiations, districts could eliminate that requirement from their contracts and start bidding for health care on the open market. When the Appleton School District put its health-insurance contract up for bid, for instance, WEA Trust suddenly lowered its rates and promised to match any competitor’s price. Appleton will save $3 million during the current school year.

Appleton isn’t alone. According to a report by the MacIver Institute, as of September 1, “at least 25 school districts in the Badger State had reported switching health care providers/plans or opening insurance bidding to outside companies.” The institute calculates that these steps will save the districts $211.45 per student. If the state’s other 250 districts currently served by WEA Trust follow suit, the savings statewide could reach hundreds of millions of dollars.

At the outset of the public-union standoff, educators had made dire predictions that Walker’s reforms would force schools to fire teachers. In February, to take one example, Madison School District Superintendent Dan Nerad predicted that 289 teachers in his district would be laid off. Walker insisted that his reforms were actually a job-retention program: by accepting small concessions in health and pension benefits, he argued, school districts would be able to spare hundreds of teachers’ jobs. The argument proved sound. So far, Nerad’s district has laid off no teachers at all, a pattern that has held in many of the state’s other large school districts. No teachers were laid off in Beloit and LaCrosse; Eau Claire saw a reduction of two teachers, while Racine and Wausau each laid off one. The Wauwatosa School District, which faced a $6.5 million shortfall, anticipated slashing 100 jobs—yet the new pension and health contributions saved them all.

The benefits to school districts aren’t just fiscal, moreover. Thanks to Walker’s collective-bargaining reforms, the Brown Deer school district in suburban Milwaukee can implement a performance-pay system for its best teachers—a step that could improve educational outcomes.

Over the summer, a sign surfaced that the public wasn’t as alarmed by the Walker agenda as the unions would have liked. In August, six Republican state senators who had supported the reforms were forced to defend their seats in recall elections. Democrats, in the minority by a 19–14 margin, needed to pick up three seats to take back the Senate. In the days before the election, Wisconsin Democratic Party chairman Mike Tate touted poll numbers showing Democrats leading in three races and in a dead heat in the rest. “Independents are moving towards the Democratic candidates in strong numbers,” he told a group of national reporters. Every race, he claimed, was “eminently winnable.”

The manner in which the public unions ran the campaigns was telling. Because they realized that public-sector collective bargaining wasn’t the wedge issue that they’d expected, not a single union-backed ad mentioned it— even though it was the reason that the unions had mobilized for the recall elections in the first place. Instead, the union ads cried that Scott Walker had “cut $800 million from the state’s schools.” This was true, but the ads neglected to mention that the governor’s increased health-care and pension-contribution requirements made up for those funds, just as Walker had planned. That the unions poured nearly $20 million into the races, by the way, validated another argument of Walker’s: that mandatory dues are a conduit through which taxpayer money gets transferred to public-sector unions, which use it to elect Democrats, who then negotiate favorable contracts with the unions. In this case, the newly strapped Wisconsin unions had to rely heavily on contributions from unions in other states.

In the end, Republicans held four of the six seats and retained control of the Senate. Democrats nevertheless bragged about defeating two incumbents, but that achievement was more modest than it appeared. One of the Republican incumbents was in a district that Barack Obama had won by 18 points in 2008. The other losing Republican had been plagued by personal problems relating to his 25-year-old mistress. Meanwhile, two of the challenged Republicans, Alberta Darling and Sheila Harsdorf, won more decisively than they had in 2008, suggesting that the reforms might be strengthening some Republican incumbents. (The other two senators who kept their seats, Luther Olsen and Rob Cowles, ran unopposed three years ago, so it’s harder to tell whether their popularity has grown.)

The unions’ cause has been hurt by some widely reported stories of public-sector mischief. The most outrageous was the saga of Warren Eschenbach, an 86-year-old former school crossing guard from Wausau. After he retired, Eschenbach, who lives two doors down from Riverview Elementary, kept helping kids cross the road every morning; it gave him a reason to get up each day, he told a local TV station. But the Wausau teachers’ union didn’t see it that way: it filed a grievance with the city to stop him, since he was no longer a unionized employee.

Such stories of union malfeasance may not be enough to save Walker. If the governor’s opponents succeed in mounting a recall election, it would take place at some point between April and June. A poll conducted in October for the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, where I work, found that Walker had a fairly low personal approval rating of 42 percent. Further, the public opposed recalling the governor from office by a troublingly slim 49 percent to 47 percent margin.

But if Walker’s task is to convince the public that the state hasn’t devolved into unfunded anarchy, he may have an easier case to make than you’d think. According to the same poll, 71 percent of Wisconsinites believe that the state’s public schools have either stayed the same or improved over the previous half-year. More than three-quarters of Wisconsinites expect the state’s economy either to get better or to stay the same in the next year, up from 60 percent during the height of the union tumult in March. And while just 23 percent of Wisconsinites think that “things in the country are generally going in the right direction,” 38 percent of them believe that that’s the case in Wisconsin, up from 27 percent in November 2010.

At his inauguration in 1959—and shortly before he created public-sector collective bargaining—Wisconsin’s newly elected Democratic governor, Gaylord Nelson, quoted Abraham Lincoln: “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. . . . We must think anew and act anew.” It’s a good thing Scott Walker took his advice. It’s imperative for Wisconsin’s fiscal future that voters take it, too.

Christian Schneider is a senior fellow at the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute.

If Wisconsin actually votes Scott Walker out of office after he proved that his policies would save the state and create jobs, it will be a poster child for an America that deserves to collapse and fail and die.

Great news! Republicans are still firmly in control of swing state Wisconsin in spite of a MASSIVE effort by unions nationwide to usurp control of the Wisconsin Senate.

Had Democrats won three of the seats, they could have tied up the Senate; four and they could have taken control. And you know if they’d won in Wisconsin, the message would have been that “the people are rejecting the extremist Republican agenda.”

MADISON, Wis. (AP) – Republicans held onto control of the Wisconsin Senate on Tuesday, beating back four Democratic challengers in a recall election despite an intense political backlash against GOP support for Gov. Scott Walker’s effort to curb public employees’ union rights.

Fueled by millions of dollars from national labor groups, the attempt to remove GOP incumbents served as both a referendum on Walker’s conservative revolution and could provide a new gauge of the public mood less than a year after Republicans made sweeping gains in this state and many others.

Two Democratic incumbents face recalls next week, but even if Democrats win those they will still be in the minority.

Turnout was strong in the morning and steady in the afternoon in communities such as Whitefish Bay, Menomonee Falls and Shorewood, where Sen. Alberta Darling was one of the four Republicans to hold onto her seat.

“I’m in a private union, so they haven’t necessarily come after me,” Spencer said. “But everybody should have the right to be in a union. I came out to stop all the union-bashing stuff.”

John Gill, 45, of Menomonee Falls, voted for Darling and questioned the opposition’s anti-GOP rhetoric, which went far beyond collective bargaining.

“This was all supposed to be about the workers’ rights, so to speak. But that has not been brought up one time. It’s all been misleading, the attack ads, things like that,” Gill said. “The one reason they started this recall, they didn’t bring up once.”

Until this year, there had been only 20 attempts since 1913 to recall any of the nation’s state lawmakers from office. Just 13 of the efforts were successful.

Also winning on Tuesday was Democratic state Rep. Jennifer Shilling of La Crosse, defeating incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Kapanke, who had been in the Senate since 2004. The other Republican ousted was first-term incumbent Sen. Randy Hopper of Fond du Lac, defeated by Democrat Jessica King, the former deputy mayor of Oshkosh.

Republican Sens. Sheila Harsdorf of River Falls, Rob Cowles of Allouez and Luther Olsen of Ripon all held onto their seats.

The stakes in Wisconsin were clearly much larger than control of the Senate. Democrats cast the recall results, in which they picked up two seats, as a rebuff of the Republican revolution started by Walker but it clearly wasn’t all that they wanted. Both parties also were testing messages ahead of the 2012 presidential race, in which Wisconsin was expected to be an important swing state.

Republican and Democratic strategists were leery of reading too much into the results heading into next year’s campaign.

The recall effort helped stir passions in the Democratic base “in ways we might never have been able to achieve on our own,” said Roy Temple, a Democratic political consultant with extensive experience in the Midwest. But, he said, that doesn’t mean the recall can offer much more than hints about broader trends.

“Wisconsin was a swing state before, and it will be after,” Temple said. “Maybe (the recall) is a sign of strong intensity, and that’s not meaningless, but it’s not predictive.”

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said the party was “all in” to win the races. A coalition of national unions spent millions on attack ads and other campaign activity to wrest seats from the Republicans. Conservative groups also spent millions.

It all amounted to a summer unlike any other in Wisconsin. More than $31 million was estimated to have been spent on the nine recall efforts, rivaling the $37 million spent on last year’s governor’s race.

“I feel that a lot of people didn’t get their way, threw a crybaby fit and decided to have a recall. The majority of Wisconsin already voted,” said 43-year-old Ross Birkigt of Menomonee Falls. “It’s a shame that all of sudden this happens and that a lot of special-interest money gets poured into it. I’m kind getting sick of seeing this stuff on TV every single minute.

Republicans won control of both houses of the Legislature and the governor’s office in the 2010 election just nine months ago.

The Legislature that had been approving Republican-backed bills in rapid succession will likely grind to a halt if Democrats win back the Senate. They would then be able to block anything from passage without a bipartisan agreement.

Any newly elected senator will take office within 15 days, a brief window in which Republican Senate leaders could call a lame-duck session if they are about to lose control.

The races next Tuesday target Sens. Bob Wirch of Pleasant Prairie and Jim Holperin of Conover.

Keep in mind, these were the six most vulnerable Republicans in the entire state. One of them was pretty much deservedly dead meat:

(Newser) – Protesters who showed up at the home of a prominent GOP Wisconsin state senator got a little scoop from his wife: Not only was Randy Hopper not home, she said, he also doesn’t live there anymore, and in fact doesn’t live in his district—owing to the fact that he’s shacked up in Madison with his 25-year-old mistress.

And good riddance to him. Especially if we can win the recalls of the two Democrats next week and replace our losses with quality Republicans.

According to new jobs figures, Wisconsin created 12,900 new private-sector jobs in June, almost as many as the 18,000 new jobs created nationwide last month. This represents the largest one-month gain of private-sector jobs in Wisconsin since 2003, according to the state Department of Workforce Development.

Not that Democrats actually give a damn about that: they don’t care about jobs; they ONLY care about union jobs that in turn fund the Democrat special interest machine in a greedy, selfish, self-centered mutual back-scratching vote purchasing program.

In South Carolina, DemocRAT commissars and their Marxist union comrades don’t give a DAMN about jobs in South Carolina. When Boeing opened a new plant in the right to work state, Democrats and the unions basically said that the ONLY jobs they care about are UNION jobs. And everybody else can just go to hell.